A month or so ago a senior journalist of the female gender mistook my early-morning terseness and telegraphic e-mail writing style for misogyny and anti-feminism and attacked me, quite robustly, for it.

My immediate reaction was a massive feeling of taedium vitae. I thought: "Oh gawd, I've been through this movie. I had the feminist conversation, Germaine Greer and Andrea Dworkin and Auntie Tammy Cobley and all, 35 years ago. Do I really have to do this again? After all, I know I'm not a misogynist; introduce me to someone with blue eyes and big tits and I'll be so nice to her you won't believe it.'

I tell you this story by way of saying that some weeks ago veteran journalist Graeme Addison handed me a book called Attuned Leadership: African Humanism as Compass by Reuel J Khoza (Penguin South Africa  2011), and asked me to "have a read" and maybe write something about it (Addison had assisted with parts of the book).

I thought to myself: "O woe is me, I like and respect Addison, and I've heard good things about Khoza, but really I don't give a tinker's any more about so-called African humanism and Ubuntu and all that tiddley-pom. That stuff is just all too meaningful and sensitive - and at this stage of my life I just want to drink beer and read Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler ..."

Well, as you probably know, on Friday Khoza unleashed a small storm in a teacup, one that might blow into a squall.

As chairman of Nedbank, Khoza wrote in the bank's latest annual report that .... Well, he wrote what people keep writing right here on Politicsweb ... but one doesn't usually find it in a major bank's annual report.

Khoza wrote that SA's democracy was under threat by a "strange breed" of political leaders who appeared incapable of dealing with the demands of modern-day governance and leadership.

"Our political leadership's moral quotient is degenerating and we're fast losing the checks and balances that are necessary to prevent a recurrence of the past."

Interesting comments at this point in our national story, especially when you-know-who's been saying things about theConstitutional Court ... so for the moment I have eschewed James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard and have started reading Attuned Leadership, which flows from Khoza's doctorate at Warwick University.

It is about Ubuntu but it is also about connectedness, compassion, empathy, humility, integrity, reasonableness and determination - and about leadership in Africa. Take a look. You could do a lot worse, I promise.  

***

Talking about our strange breeds: everyone in the media, including girls, got hard-ons yesterday about the decision of the ANC's Big Six to address the media about "ANC unity" at Luthuli House.

Lest you don't know the identity of the Big Six, they are: National chairman Baleka "crocodile" Mbete, President Jacob "lion" Zuma, Deputy-President Kgalema "buffalo" Motlanthe, Secretary-General Gwede "elephant" Mantashe, treasurer-general Mathews "leopard" Phosa, and deputy secretary-general Thandi "rhinoceros" Modise.

The decision to hold the presser came in the wake of ANC youth leaguers appearing a week or so ago at a rally in Tzaneen wearing t-shirts adorned with Motlanthe's head. At the same rally Little Julie Malema cast aside his customary diplomacy and subtlety and called Zuma a "big head" and made various disparaging comments about "people charged with corruption".

It also followed an appearance at Wits University at which Little Julie was accompanied by Phosa. At the same gathering Malema said Zuma was a dictator who had squashed opposition and was about to dispatch youth leaguers to labour camps (not a bad idea, actually).

There have also been countless newspaper stories about how Motlanthe is going to challenge Zuma for the presidency at Mangaung in December and that this one and that one are wooing Cyril Ramaphosa for the end-of-year list, etc.

Rumours were therefore rife yesterday, being tweeted and twotted and twanged, among them an exciting one that the Big Six would disband the Youth League there and then; or maybe announce that Little Julie would be hung from the top floor of Luthuli House by his unmentionables.

But the lengthy press conference was nothing like that.

In fact it was inimitably handled by Mantashe and the fellows. The SG was at his excoriating (I've always wanted to use that word) and witheringly, witty, Leftie best. He could have been a ringmaster at Barnum & Bailey's - or at a meeting of an underground communist cell in a Lithuanian shtetl 80 years ago.

For just a moment there, I thought I saw the ghost of Joe Slovo in the room, grinning broadly. What was that wonderful folk song from my youth, about a labour activist, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, IWW or the Wobblies, as performed by Joan Baez? Oh yeah: "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night."

It seemed clear to me that Zuma and Mantashe won a real PR victory yesterday afternoon - something that they have not done for a long, long time.

First they had that wonderful and quintessential matriarch, Modise (who could also easily play front row for the Bulls and with whom no one messes), sweetly and politely point out that, if you are a parent, then you know full well that you are bound to have trouble with the teenagers in the house - thus infantilizing Malema and his crew in one fell swoop.

Second, Motlanthe was there alongside Zuma, essentially saying that he didn't approve of such disloyal behaviour as that which he had been accused of by the press, and that he (this was implied) certainly wasn't in competition with JZ. The same applied to Phosa. (Things might change by October, but that's not the point.)

In short, they stuck a fat pin into the air-filled balloon of Malema's weeks and months of posturing - and they also stuck a pin into all the stuff that the media has been churning out, about Motlanthe being a major contender for the presidency in December and Phosa being in opposition to Zuma, and so on and so forth.

In short, we're back to the 2007 pre-Polokwane coverage of the ANC and its "succession battle" - the media keeps flying various kites to see which one will stay up, but in fact no one is really going to know what's potting for quite a while longer. 

And it was all done pretty humorously - as if to say, "Who's your daddy? C'mon now, South Africa. There, there. Everything's fine."

Actually, the media has been suggesting that Zuma is seriously under siege - and maybe we have all been buying that, even those of us who know that what the media communicates and reality are not always one and the same thing. And at the beginning of the show yesterday, ol' Gedleyihlekisa was looking a bit pinched about the gills. But he soon loosened up.

I wondered last night if Mantashe maybe had a pot or two over the extended lunch that preceded the 16h00 press conference. What's that doubtless apocryphal story about Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S Grant? When some twits accused Grant of intemperance, Lincoln's reply was, "If I knew what brand of whiskey he drinks I would send a barrel or so to some other generals."

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